A Friendly Letter – by my Special Ed Student

This is the first draft of a letter by one of my Special Ed student who is mainstreamed into my classroom. He’s the arsonist from last week.

This is a tremendous improvement from him! You have no idea how proud I am of him and his progress. At the beginning of the teacher and for the next four months, I was lucky if I got two words out of him. Usually he could get his name on top of the paper and that was it!

This piece of writing was independently done as part of his writing assessment. He needed me to remind him to stay focused and to write about earning and saving money, but other than that, all these sentences came from his brain!

Dear Ms. XXX
You should save money and you should also save money to buy a car. It is important to earn money and save money because you need things.
Sincerely, XXXX

He corrected his spelling mistake. He spelled “should” correctly except for the backward “d”. No punctuation marks, but plenty of content. He got a complete piece of writing, from beginning to end, though it lacks details.

This piece of writing is in response to the prompt: Convince a friend to earn and save money. Describe in details how to earn and save money. Tell why it is wise to earn and save money.

How did I get him to this point? I can’t even describe the amount of work and the tremendous progress he’s made!